Sudanese rape victims communicate from Chad’s refugee camps | Sudan warfare | USAEMALL.com

Roua*, 18, misses her home in el-Geneina, where luscious mangoes grew in her small garden.

The RSF burned down her home in June 2023.

“They burned our whole village,” she says. Two of her brothers, an uncle and three neighbours were killed in the attack.

Roua tried to escape on foot, but she and eight of her school friends were kidnapped by RSF fighters. All of them were raped.

“They held us for two days. Two of them even died in that place from the rapes,” she says, her eyes watering as she remembers her lost friends.

“I felt helpless. I wished I would die at that moment.”

Two years on, the horror still lingers.

“I still can’t sit still for a long time,” she says.

Roua’s face is unanimated as she speaks, her hand resting on the baby she is breastfeeding. The child’s father is a Chadian police officer she met at the market in Adre after fleeing across the border with most of her family.

They dated a few times, and at first, she believed he cared for her.

“He told me: ‘I like you. I want you,’” she says, trailing off as footsteps approach. Even within the privacy of a small tent, such testimonies are shared with trepidation.

“He wanted to have sex with me, … and I refused,” she says, recalling her second interaction with him in his home.

“He grabbed me and slammed me down on the floor,” she says, explaining how she was then raped.

Roua is no longer in contact with her rapist.

Sexual abuse during humanitarian crises and in refugee camps is not uncommon.

“For some young girls, it is sex for survival,” Loiseau says. At the Maison d’étoile, the Red Cross’s House of Stars in Adre, she and her team offer discreet psychological support.

“They tell us people invite them to do laundry or other work, … but at the end, they don’t get paid – they get raped. They get violated. There is nothing they can do about it,” she says, referring to refugees who often go to work for locals in Adre.

Aid workers and community leaders have raised concerns about the number of pregnancies in the camp, especially given the absence of many women’s husbands.

“When you dig, … you find out it wasn’t consensual,” Loiseau says.

Staring into the distance, Roua monotonously rocks little nine-month-old Awa. She describes how the rape angered her father and humiliated her, rupturing her family. She says another friend – also pregnant after being raped by a Chadian police officer – returned to Sudan out of shame.

“Inside, I’m broken. Sometimes, I cannot eat. I cannot sleep. I don’t have the desire to talk to people. … I feel like I’ve changed.”

Despite Borgo’s claims that things are under control, refugees say violence is on the rise in the camp. One gang called The Colombians has become infamous for causing trouble, so much so that women say they try not to leave their homes after dusk and make sure they are out of the market by 6pm.

According to Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, incidents of sexual violence have been reported in and near the camp.

“When women leave the camp to collect firewood or water, they may be targeted,” says Dr Assoumana Halarou, MSF’s medical coordinator in Chad.

Hanan, a woman sitting in UNICEF’s listening tent, became one of those victims earlier in the day, when she was raped while collecting firewood.

Psychological support is available, but Hanan is desperate for medical care instead.

“I have six children. I am the wife and the husband. … If I have another child, how do I feed him?” she asks while berating herself for her “bad luck”.

“Many women in the camps are single mothers or heads of households living in precarious conditions, which can expose the most vulnerable to abuse,” Halarou says.